Suiheisha

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The Zenkoku Suiheisha (Japanese: 全国水平社, lit. "National Levelers' Association") was a Japanese human rights organization founded on 3 March 1922 to advocate for the liberation of the Burakumin, an outcast group subjected to discrimination. Launched in Kyoto in the liberal atmosphere of the Taishō era, the Suiheisha was the first national organization formed by the Burakumin to protest discrimination. It was preceded by smaller, government-sponsored improvement movements known as Yūwa (conciliation), but the Suiheisha distinguished itself by rejecting government assistance and advocating for self-liberation through direct action protest campaigns known as kyūdan (denunciation). The movement grew rapidly, establishing a national network and a newspaper, the Suihei Shimbun. Its ideology evolved from a broad human-rights focus to an engagement with leftist political theories, particularly anarchism and Bolshevism. This led to internal factional struggles throughout the 1920s, which, combined with increasing government repression under the Peace Preservation Law, brought the organization to the brink of collapse by the early 1930s. The Suiheisha was revived in 1933, spurred by a successful national campaign against a discriminatory court ruling and the development of a new, coherent theory of liberation known as Buraku Iinkai Katsudō (Buraku Committee Activity). This strategy linked local, practical demands for improved living conditions with a broader political struggle. However, under the rising tide of militarism and nationalism in the late 1930s, the Suiheisha's leadership gradually abandoned its leftist positions. The organization began cooperating with the government's Yūwa policy and supporting the war effort. It was formally ordered to dissolve in January 1942 and was absorbed into the state-controlled Dōwa Hōkōkai (Dōwa Public Service Group). Despite its dissolution, the Suiheisha's two-decade history of activism and theoretical debate provided a critical foundation for the post-war Buraku Liberation League.